Hyperbolic Maddow Guest Claims Muslim 'Kids' Being Executed in US

Hardly a week passes that we don't learn of another mass execution committed in the Mideast by the medieval Islamist thugs in ISIS.

But did you know that Muslims children are being executed in the United States? It must be true because I heard it last night on "The Rachel Maddow Show" and, no, it didn't come from defrocked anchor Brian Williams.

Maddow was talking about the "Countering Violent Extremism" summit at the White House with Linda Sarsour, "advocacy and civic engagement coordinator" at the National Network for Arab American Communities, when Sarsour made the startling claim --

MADDOW: Do you feel like in the fight right now over how best to combat ISIS overseas, as that's being debated in terms of both mil-, I mean, one of the things that was interesting today was the president was talking about, yeah, this is a military fight but it's also all these other different types of fights and it's a way that America has to use our soft power abroad and we have to sort of like project our values abroad in a way that's going to help defeat this, beyond just what we're doing militarily.

Do you feel like that discussion is constructive or that is also basically over-reductive and it isn't taking account of how we've been acting?

SARSOUR: I mean, if we want to uphold our values and we want to show the rest of the world how wonderful we are, well, we need to start here at home. While we're talking about partnering with Muslim communities and you are a partner and you are part of the fabric of our society, our government operates massive surveillance program, unwarranted surveillance in Muslim communities, chilling free speech, making people feel afraid.

I mean, a lot of Muslims have come to the United States to get away from regimes where they feel like their freedom of speech is infringed on, where some people don't have freedom of religion. We come to the US, 22 states with anti-sharia bills trying to ban us from practicing our faith, mosque oppositions, we're fighting, you know, zoning boards across the country, our kids are hearing this rhetoric, we have people, mosques being vandalized, kids being executed, Islamophobia, leaders on national television saying that, you know, holy wars and these people want to take over America. I mean, it's just, it doesn't, for me, reflect what we do stand for as a country and the minority in our country who are the loudest voices are reflecting what we are, and that's not who we are as a country.

I'm an American, I'm a Muslim -- should I cut myself in half? What side am I on? I'm born in Brooklyn, I can't take that away and no one can take that away from me, I can't be deported anywhere. So it's just a really hard conversation to have with young people, especially young Muslims, who don't know what side they're supposed to be on. I'm on the American side. I'm on the right side, I'm on the side of justice. That's the only sides that I'm on.

On an actual news program and with a scrupulous journalist sitting across from her, Sarsour would have gotten this bare minimum in pushback -- those Muslim children being executed, or "kids" as you describe them -- where is this happening ...?

Consider the context of Sarsour's remarks. When she says, "our kids are hearing this rhetoric," she is clearly referring to impressionable children whose delicate sensibilities should not be exposed to vile use of the language. Yet in the next breath she claims "mosques (are) being vandalized, kids being executed" -- after having already established that "kids" are young people whose delicate sensibilities must be shielded from the brutalities of the world. In other words, children.

Sarsour made another, almost equally bizarre claim when describing herself as Muslim and American -- "Should I cut myself in half?" What normal person thinks like that, then states it aloud? It was with good reason that Lincoln said a house divided against itself cannot stand. For a person to suggest her body violently "cut" in half over divisions that need not divide her is gratuitously gruesome -- Islamist, you might say. Sarsour also seemingly boasts of being born in Brooklyn and adds, "I can't take that away" -- why would you want to?

Instead of asking Sarsour the Journalism 101 question in response to her outlandish claim about Americans executing Muslim youngsters, Maddow played along instead --

SARSOUR: I'm on the American side, I'm on the right side, I'm on the side of justice. That's the only sides (sic) that I'm on.

MADDOW: And you can't split yourself in half (Maddow careful to avoid repeating "cut") to do that ..

SARSOUR (piously): No.

MADDOW: ... and you shouldn't have to. And there is a big difference between talking about our values and living them. I think what is happening domestically around issues about bigotry right now is spooky. It's not like it hasn't existed before but the way it's bubbling upright now and being mainstreamed right now, I am spooked by, and thank you ...

Come to think of it, was Sarsour referring to the three residents of Chapel Hill, N.C., all of them Muslim, who were shot to death execution-style last week over an apparent festering dispute about parking? The victims, a married couple and the woman's younger sister, were ages 23, 21, and 19. The oldest was a doctoral student; the two sisters attended university.

If these are the "kids" who were "executed," Maddow's reluctance in asking for elaboration is understandable -- the Facebook page of the accused killer, a militant atheist and left winger, shows that he's a Maddow fan. Helps explain why she's so "spooked."

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